The fifth International Dota 2 Championships are close to being underway. The main event for TI5 is held on August 3rd to the 8th at the KeyArena in Seattle.
The prize pool this year has been growing steadily and so far has reached all the way up to $17,282,133. Which is almost $7 million more than last year’s TI. This year’s prize distribution is a little different as well. While the teams that placed in the top 8 of last year’s tournament won significantly more money than the rest, this year’s TI aims to reward all the teams that have qualified to participate in TI5. The prize distribution for TI5 is as follows:

The Group Stage will start on July 27th and continue into July 30th. Group A will consist of Wild Card Winner 2, compLexity Gaming, Invictus Gaming, LGD Gaming, Natus Vincere, Fnatic, Cloud9, and Team Secret. While Group B will consist of Wild Card Winner 1, EHOME, Evil Geniuses, Team Empire, Vici Gaming, Newbee, Virtus Pro, and MVP Hot6.

Newbee, the defending champions of TI4, have come into this year’s TI with mediocre tournament results during the season. Analysts are speculating they might have a hard time with this year’s TI because of how dominant Team Secret have been in the prior tournaments coming into TI. Team Secret are definitely the favored to win, but don’t count out any of these group stage team as they are more than capable of handling their own in a tournament setting.

Spectators can watch The International 5 live with: on Dota2.com, in-person at KeyArena with the TI5 badge, in a Pubstomp (http://www.dota2.com/pubstomps/listings/), Youtube.com, and Twitch.tv. Replays will be available after the game as well.